Forever Devoted,
Atlas
Inverness, Scotland
My Beloved Angel,
Your letters are the joy of my days, and my days of happiness are numbered. Since I left you, a near-constant depression has settled itself in my bones. Incessantly, I live over and over in my memory your caresses, your sweet murmurings, your joyous laughter and tears. I yearn for the solitude of your affection. I thought that I loved you months ago, but since our separation, my love has grown a thousandfold. Each day that I’ve known you, I’ve adored you.
Nature, however, has its own timeline, and I am left only to trust that there is a why and reason for the delay in our union. If only you were less gracious, less beautiful, less good and affectionate, maybe then I could forget how easy loving you has become. Your absence robs me of reason; your silence inflames my blood. I wait daily for a letter from any passerby who’s been near Skye. I’m afraid to have a single thought that isn’t of you, for the alternative is to ponder my own destruction.
I am told I am lucky because the new self-appointed commander has arrived. His accent is thick from a faraway land, atop his head he wears a foolish wig of powdered white, and the men (albeit behind his back) call him Bonnie Prince Charlie. I know not whether he is officially a prince or only calls himself one. I trust there isn’t a scant bit of difference between the two anyway.
I am hopeful that because I have come under his good graces acting as his honorary guard, I’ll be at the foremost ear of strategy and can position myself accordingly to protect His Grace and myself from the carnage that will befall many of the men.
Bonnie Prince Charlie, however, seems ill-equipped for combat and professes his skill to be rallying the troops. The men are tired, some already lost to sickness or the cold.
As I sit here now, there are licks of flame for as far as the eye can see as small groups of mostly clansmen huddle together for warmth. The snow has already dusted our boots with the morning light, but if the chill turns even cooler, we’ll lose more men to the temperature than the battlefield. We’ve heard word that Edinburgh has fallen. We’re only waiting for the moment when a crimson wave of chaos descends upon our heads. The land is spongy with marsh and peat, and the first inch freezes nearly solid through the night. A single wool blanket does little to fight the cold dread that’s seeped into our bones. There is little left of morale when the scent of death hangs in the air.
For all this, the prince only exclaims that the backup plan is over the sea to Skye! He chants this phrase daily to his nearest advisers, but he makes a small effort to charm the ears of the clansmen with cries of freedom and sacrifice when he feels up to it.
His threads are fine and his wig is fair, and I wonder how he will manage when this turns into a very bloody affair.
The enemy will descend, and when it does, it will be the fall of the clans and clan life as we’ve known it. I wish I were there to hold you or to run away with you before the men of Clan Campbell sing their battle cry.
The Jacobites are well trained but starved, the clansmen strong but sleeping under a bed of stars and sleet. Frostbite comes and goes and makes it hard to practice with my arrow. You are sweet (and very ill-advised) to offer to come to us. Your skills as a birthing nurse would no doubt come in handy here, if anything, for the men to see a kind face in their last moments. But life is brutal, and I could not bear it if you found yourself here. Your presence would, after all, lead to certain death. We’ve heard the Royal Army isn’t kind to their prisoners of war; tales of torture and far worse have made their way to my ears.
My last wish, should I fail to make it back to you, is that you love yourself as I have loved you, in the darkness and the light and soul-deep, forevermore.
I remain proud to say I was protecting Clan Campbell till the end.
I smile as our new commander says “over the sea to Skye.” Only, Skye isn’t my contingency plan—it’s my way back to you.
My only plan.
Sending a thousand loving kisses over the sea to Skye.
Eternally Yours,
Atlas
Isle of Skye, Scotland
My Devoted Atlas,
Confirmation has reached me that you are dead.
All I have left is my love for you, and even that has been tarnished by circumstance.
I write to you now as I look out over the stars and sea, the message in a bottle I’ll send on the waves in the hope that one day my love returns to you.
With the moonlight cascading over Leith, I confess that I partook in an act of treason.
The news of the fall of the clans at Culloden has reverberated through every small village in the Highlands. Many have spent these last weeks waiting fearfully in their cottages, clutching at their meager defenses as rations dwindle and spring snow prevents new crops from being sewn.
Mother enlisted the help of both Flora and me in treating villagers who fell ill or too weak to care for themselves. From sunup until sundown, Flora and I treated men, women, and families over each glen and peak of Skye. After three fortnights or more had passed, we were called to a special case that required local expertise of field medicine and discretion. None the wiser that Bonnie Prince Charlie had been camped out on Skye these last many weeks since the Battle of Culloden, imagine our surprise when we walked into a cramped fishing hut to find a weak bonnie prince. We spent two weeks bringing him teas of chamomile and ginger and collecting local herbs to make tinctures to soothe his distended abdomen. When he was strong enough to walk on his own again, we were again enlisted in the service of the failed prince to assist in his escape back to France.
I winced when he asked I bring him a change of my clothes when next I visited. Flora was tall and required all of her dresses to be hemmed accordingly, but the bonnie prince was more diminutive in stature, like me.
